"I believe it is
appropriate here for me to interject a note of
personal acknowledgement regarding not only the
consistent professionalism I have observed and admire
in your performance of various roles in the
organization's operations but the general affability
you manage to maintain in the often swirling chaos and
overwhelming darkness of life at AS220. I firmly
believe that your combination of skills and attitude
could serve as a great model for much of the general
populace in this little corner of the world."
C
Black helicopter in the sky
C
Above the mountains and the motels
C G
And the militiamen you fly
G C
How does it feel to be so high?
C
Black helicopter, can't you see
C
That from a distance all the John Does
C G
Look a lot like you and me
G G
How does it feel to be so free?
Bm Am
And I know that some may call it treason
Bm Am
How they would love to see you fall
Bm Am
But I know there's just one simple reason
Am C
It's 'cause they've got no helicopters
C G
No helicopters at all
G C
No helicopters
C G
No helicopters at all
G C
No helicopters
Am G C
Oh no ... oh no ... oh no ...
Black helicopter up above
I hear your motor, I know your rotor singas a simple song of love
Just like the heartbeat of a dove
Black helicopter in the night
With infrared and ultraviolet I know you're keeping up the fight
With all your dreams in black and white
And I know that some may call it treason
How they would love to see you fall
But I know there's just one simple reason, it's 'cause
They've got no helicopters
No helicopters at all
No helicopters
No helicopters at all
No helicopters
Oh no ... oh no ... oh no ...
(c) 2005 Matt Obert.
All Rights Reserved All Wrongs Reversed
I'm Stoppable
My flow is guarded / My rhymes are retarded
Suckers try to stop me, but I never got started
I'm guarded / Retarded / I never got started
Tried to get in the hip hop club, I got carded
'cause I'm stoppable
I'm stoppable (x3)
It's time I faced it / My efforts are wasted
Put too many rhymes in a line, I cut and pasted
I chased it / Could taste it / Misplaced it / Erased it
Tried to get away with a crime, but I got maced, it's
'cause I'm stoppable
I'm stoppable (x3)
"It's raining, it's pouring" / Lyrically I'm boring
Hear my beats bump and all the ladies start snoring
Ignoring / All the useless energy I'm storing
Tried to be a pimp, but I ended up whoring
'cause I'm stoppable
I'm stoppable (x3)
Someone tell the drummer to give me a break
Oh, this beat is hard
This beat is so hard
This beat is too hard
It's hard!
And so my flow is guarded / My rhymes are retarded
Suckers try to stop me, but I never got started
I'm guarded / Retarded / I never got started
Tried to get
in the hip hop club
but I got car . . .
ded . . .
'cause . . .
I'm . . .
Headline:
Magnolia Electric Co. Makes
Lightning Work
Subhead:
At AS220 on August 11, with Grand Buffet
and Joey Beats
Byline: Exclusive Interview for The Agenda by
Matt Obert
Pull
Quote: The light isn't necessarily the one thing that
you'll remember. It could be the wolf, or it could be the dark, or it
could be the moon.
Ten
years ago, a shadowy figure rode into Providence, RI from the
badlands of Oberlin, Ohio—diminutive in stature, wearing a cowboy
hat, worn corduroys and square-toed loafers, with a four-string tenor
guitar slung over his shoulder. Of those who met him at pizza joints
and used-record sales during the summer of 1995, few knew that his
real name was Jason Molina. (He preferred to introduce himself as
“Sparky,” and also mysteriously acquired the nickname “The
Guardian.”) Unless you have a copy of the flexidisc released with
Wingnut fanzine #3, you've probably never heard Sparky belting his
heart out at the Milhous co-op, accompanied by legendary Providence
drummer Joe Propatier (Sourpuss, Scarce, Silver Apples, Bevis Frond,
etc.) Not long after his departure from Providence,
Molina's star began its rise to the heavens when Will Oldham released
the first Songs:Ohia recording on his Palace Records imprint.
Since
then, Songs:Ohia has carved out a niche in alt-country territory, as
Molina courted collaborations with such luminaries as Edith Frost (on
Axxess and Aces) and Scotland's Arab Strap (on The Lioness)
for his ever-expanding portfolio of releases on Bloomington,
Indiana-based label Secretly Canadian Records. The production and
instrumentation has varied, but the prevailing mood has been
melancholy, with porch-rock numbers driven by Molina's winsome tenor
yowling.
With
his new band, Magnolia Electric Co.,
Jason Molina has left the porch far behind. Their latest full-length,
What Comes After
The Blues, opens with “The
Dark Don't Hide It,” a rootsy rocker in the grand tradition of The
Band or Crazy Horse, boasting the balls-out production of studio
legend Steve Albini. All the songs on the album are inspired in some
way by the Hank Williams tune “I Saw The Light.” It may be a
literal light—like the moon, or neon—or a moment of mental
clarity or spiritual epiphany, depending on the context of the song,
but each track is equally suffused with the same blinding light.
Pull Quote: The Mighty
Wurlitzer is endowed with staggering power—enough to make the
Wizard of Oz look like a Punch-and-Judy puppeteer.
The Providence Performing
Arts Center is a perfectly-preserved vaudeville-era cathedral, and
its beating heart is the Mighty Wurlitzer. On stage right (or house
left, if you are in the audience) sits the console which controls a
vintage pipe organ built in 1927. It's a massive
affair—one of the
three largest organs of its type in the world—with five rows of
keyboards, crowned at the top by a double arc of red and white stop
tabs like a candy-cane halo.
But pay attention to the
machine behind that curtain: the console is only the control panel
for a bewildering array of wind-powered
whatchamacallits—whistles,
bells, chimes, gongs, cymbals, snares, absurd buzzers, even a giant
marimba—hidden behind titanic grilles on either side of the stage.
Somewhere in the wings, or backstage, or in the basement below, a
turbine blower as big as a compact car serves as the lungs of the
clockwork contraption. When the air pressure builds up, the
instrument is endowed with staggering power—enough to make the
Wizard of Oz look like a Punch-and-Judy puppeteer.
For Raphael Lyon,
who plays a custom-built electric organ under the moniker
mudboy, it was love at first
sight. He knew that he had to compose music for this unique
instrument. Thanks to the cooperation of PPAC, and a grant from the
Rhode Island State Council on the Arts,
his dream came true at seven o'clock on Wednesday, June 8,
2005.
Baby's First Breakbeat
I've always meant to start using my computers to
create music, but my stubborn insistence on using all
Open Source / Free Software operating systems and
tools has left me a bit jealous of my friends with
their proprietary noisemaking toys: Acid, Vegas,
Fruity Loops, Garage Band, etc.
Well, no more! Last night, I popped a Knoppix
Linux Live CD into my workstation and started goofing
around with Audacity, a
surprisingly mature and full-featured audio editing
program which is available for Windows 98 and newer,
Mac OS X, Linux, and other UNIX-like operating
systems.
I decided to start with the venerable "Amen, Brother"
drum break -- one of the most popular samples in
history. A little googling for "amen brother wav"
landed me here,
although there are many other online archives of
breakbeat samples (and if I ever get tired of using
the same raw materials as everyone else, I can record
my own samples.)
And the fruit of my efforts? Well, it's no pop hit,
but I guess it's a proof of concept:
When
three new local releases from three excellent local bands, each
worthy of an in-depth feature article, arrive simultaneously, and
their arrival coincides with the deadline for a new biweekly newspaper,
there's only one thing to do: write three capsule reviews and hope
for more ink in the second issue!
Mahi
Mahi(Re)Move Your Body (Corleone)
The
soundtrack to a cyberpunk spy flick never filmed, (Re)Move Your
Body lurches to life and staggers across a gleaming stainless
dancefloor in an eerie neon Tron-scape, like a malfunctioning cyborg
obscenely popping and locking its numb legs to the glitchy chatter of
its own leaking memory, a machine with a human pulse.
The
robot meets the agents at Gate Nine, and they are dressed in Miami
Vice white. Like all secret agents, they have guns. (They may, if you
prefer, have qualities commonly attributed to guns: the dispassionate
coolness of gray gunmetal, the velocity of hot lead.) The agents,
speaking through a vocoder to disguise their voices, decrypt the
message: “Strap these roses to your body, march in and blow
them all away.” Fade to black.
The
beat comes back. A quick montage: a kick drum, a synth stand, a floor
tom, a drum pad, a white suit, a high hat, a black box, a microphone,
and a ticking briefcase about to explode in a cascade of rose petals,
all lit in flickering red and blue strobe light.
For
best results, listen with mirrored shades.
$12.00
ppd from Corleone Records, PO Box 65, Providence, RI 02901, or
online:
Alec
K. Redfearn and the EyesoresThe Quiet Room
(Cuneiform Records)
An
angry shaft of sunlight impales dust motes in the warm and heavy air,
pinning a wretched hangover to tangled and sweaty blankets, as The
Quiet Room opens with “Simian
Fanfare” (fifteen seconds of retching analog synthesizer,
bleating alarm clock and throbbing jaw harp) before tapping the
snooze bar and plunging the listener back into the dark dream of “The
Night It Rained Glass On Onion Street.” Those fifteen seconds
are a fair warning: there
are plenty of midnights and thunderstorms to be found here, circus
trains and gypsy caravans, and would-be evangelists with stained
teeth on the 99 bus, but this is not the sort of
quiet room where a milk-skinned maiden strums a gut-strung guitar and
croons “Kum Ba Ya.”
Yet
there is beauty here as well, from the minimalist phase piece
“Morphine Drip” to the Eastern European folk (via
fuzztone prog-rock) of “Bulgarian Skin Mechanic.”
And there is mystery here, for this puzzling band boasts strings
(upright bass, cello, viola, violin, guitar), horns (French horn,
alto sax), keys (accordion, piano, Hammond B3 organ), percussion
(drum kit, hand cymbals, floor tom, glockenspiel, cowbell, bells,
maracas, tambourine, brake drums, pots & pans), and special
effects (analog and digital electronics, handheld tape recorder,
bowed cymbals, alarm clock, telephone, paper cutter.)
Yes,
Alec K. Redfearn, perhaps the most prolific and least
predictable accordionist ever to crawl out of Mansfield,
Massachusetts, has outdone himself again, this time by marrying the
experimental improvisation of his instrumental ensemble Barnacled
with the eclectic avant-trad and fake-folk tunes of the Eyesores.
Available
from Cuneiform Records, P.O. Box 8427, Silver Spring MD 20907-8427,
or on the web:
Superchief
TrioThe Devil Knows Me Better
(Needlenose Music)
Lowdown
and dirty barrelhouse jump blues with a twist of mischievous wit, the
Superchief Trio is the perfect soundtrack to a night of drinking,
dancing, and sandwiches. Wait a minute, did I say sandwiches?
That
would be “Bop Wah Wah,” Keith Munslow's soulful
ode to sad, solitary sandwiches, and it's only one of fourteen
foot-stomping original piano blues tunes on Superchief's debut disc.
Still,
referring to this CD as a “debut” is a bit misleading:
Pam Murray's smooth and sultry vocals have moved to the
forefront in this incarnation, but she's the same trombone player who
accompanied Munslow in Neo-'90s Dance Band
and Smoking Jackets.John Cote has been playing with Mr. Munslow for even longer:
before he replaced V. Majestic's Stu Powers as the Neo-'90s drummer,
he and Munslow had worn the foam puppet heads in Erminio Pinque's Big
Nazo Band.
A
few special guests enliven this recording: Thom Enright shreds
on slide guitar for “Bop Wah Wah,” while Marty Ballou
lends upright bass punch to Munslow's left piano hand on “Big
Blue Chair” and “Say Baby That Way.” Meanwhile,
tenor and baritone saxophonist Geoff Adams (also a
hornblower for Smoking Jackets and Neo-'90s)
is reunited with Keith and Pam on “Head So Big” and “You
Surprised Me.”
Perhaps
we can expect the Superchief Trio to share the stage with some of the
same guests when they celebrate the release of The Devil Knows Me
Better on Saturday, February
26th at 8:00 pm at the Blackstone River Theatre (549 Broad
Street, Cumberland – www.riverfolk.org).
Admission is $10. Dress as fancy as you please, but make sure you're
dressed to dance.
BYLINE:
The Colonel, Ashley Mercado, and Matt Obert
SUBHEAD:
I Has a Needs, for the Stumbleweeds
by The Colonel
Man,
working in a busy little bar in Rhode Island isn’t exactly what
I thought I’d be doin’ after being in the trenches for so
many years. Especially after traveling all over the world and havin’
my life flash before my eyes more than once. Somehow ending up here
in Providence makes the whole trip just that much more exciting.
See,
most people wouldn’t think twice that loading cases of beer in
the storage room of a local rock ‘n’ roll bar could be
exciting. What’s exciting about haulin’ booze around, you
may ask? Well, listening to great music while you do it definitely
helps. See, my ears were perked up to the upbeat sounds of a twangin’
and bouncin’, honky-tonkin’, country-a-billying,
rock-n-rollin’ band being amplified by the ventilation duct in
the storage room. Wait a minute. Am I in Rhode Island, or did the
time machine just autopilot me to Ernest Tubbs’ Saturday Nite
Jamboree, Nashville, Tennessee?
I
just got the blast of energy I need to get me through my long shift.
I haul the beer to the other cooler with the sounds of Desperation
and Salvation ringing in my ears. The sound of the band just sucks me
right in. My Dad used to call this stuff “Okie music.”
You sure don’t hear those new modern country bands playing this
stuff. No watering down the drinks with this outfit. Straight up, no
chaser, just the way it should be. Old time raw guitar, sweet and
raspy vocals right up in yer face and the upright bass and stand-up
drums are slappin’ and flat-tire-ing their way to the promised
land.
I
can’t think of a better way to get warmed up for a night of
drinking, dancin’ and romancing than the Stumbleweeds on
stage.
I’ve
only got a few minutes to check these guys and a gal out as I walk
around the room pickin’ up empty bottles actin’ like I’m
helpin’ out the bartender. I can’t help boppin’ my
head and snappin’ my fingers. I don’t want the boss to
notice that I’m havin’ fun on the job. This band just
made my night. I love the tunes and got a new swing in my step as I
scoot back into the cooler to get more cold ones for the patrons and
listen to the sounds of the Old South echo through the walls.
SUBHEAD:
Bitten by the Cobramatics
by Ashley Mercado
I
stroll through the Green Room and listen. A man brushes past me with
a case of beer on his shoulder. I glance long enough to see he’s
hot from movement, and not looking at his feet but the stage. I order
a drink from the bartendress, and she tips her eyes not to me but to
the man standing on stage and singing like a loon. A woman sways next
to me. I pause and to notice she’s moving to the sounds that
filter from the stage. I lean with my back to the bar to refocus my
direction and join everyone in their concentration on the stage.
That
boy can sing. That man can play guitar. That gent sure bangs the
upright well.
I
continue to stand, watch, and attend. I am thinking about eating,
shooting and leaving. But I maintain my ground and hold a breath for
the boy that steps off the stage, into the crowd while he hollers a
song, and the band beats behind him like alcoholics in the age of
prohibition. The crowd is drunk from the sound and the booze. I hold
my stance without a twitch and think about the lonely lyrics. I watch
those men on stage humping their instruments like it’s a
sex-show-orgy free to the crowd, even though it was a solid seven
dollars to get in.
The
Cobramatics siphon their poison-music all over this green room
and everyone seems to enjoy the concoction that is mixed evenly by
the three spinners on stage and filtered like happy-gas through the
PA system. I watch a man pass by me, a
weird bulge under his suit jacket, and he looks haggard with
the weight of purpose. His eyes don’t leave the stage, though
his direction continues to move away from the source of his
concentration.
The
boy that sings like hell-fire steps back up on the stage and leans
over the crowd to beat it into them he’s the one with the mic.
The crowd leans back and lets that voice wash over them like air. The
guitarist, I see, has a smile with purchase and I sense from him he
is right now where he is happiest. And to me this is believable. The
up-right bassist continues to command the strings and neck of his
companion instrument.
As
I stand and watch I realize that the Cobramatics never forget
about the audience. They look, move, sing, and play to the
crowd – they never turn their backs, they never focus on their
hands, they never do anything but entertain, and they do it well.
SUBHEAD:
A Hell of a Hayride
by Matt Obert
A
gangly guy brushes against my shoulder, momentarily rearranging the
snub-nosed pistol holstered under my
jacket. This place is crowded. Somebody sent me here to ask
the stockboy a few questions, but I can't do it in front of all these
people.
Shit.
Who is that dame in the red feather boa? She's been staring at me
all through the opening acts. Does she know who I am? I'd better
play it cool.
I
sidle up to the bartender and order my usual boilermaker. The whiskey
hits me like a freight train, and I'm sipping my beer chaser when
Louisiana Hayride takes the
stage and erupts in a fireball of '50s-style Memphis retro-rock.
Sounds like Elvis, I think to
myself, but with better guitar solos.
The band is hotter than hellfire tonight. Still, it would be nice if
they played more obscure Elvis tunes. More Carl Perkins, maybe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I
catch the stockboy headed for the stairs, reminding me that I've got
a job to do. The beer goes down in one long gulp. I slam the empty
pint glass on the bar and follow the stockboy downstairs.
Of course, he's down here to
smoke a cigarette. Smoking in the bar is no longer allowed in this
state. But I've got no time to worry about the legality of the
situation. I follow the fellow out the front door and roughly
shoulder him around the corner, reaching under my jacket to pull out
the pistol. I cock the hammer and jab the nightclub employee in the
ribs with the business end of the gun. “Keep cool,” I
bark in a hoarse whisper. “I gotta ask you a few questions.”
“That upright bass player
from Louisiana Hayride,” I continue. “Wasn't he in the
Stumbleweeds too?” The stockboy is rattled, but he manages to
murmur his assent. “Isn't that Jack Hanlon from the
Amazing Crowns, the Mole People and Flower Gang?” I hiss,
poking the stockboy's ribcage to punctuate the band names. “Y-yeah,
that's him,” the stockboy stammers.
“And
the guitarist from the Stumbleweeds,” I mutter. “Is that
Dennis Kelly of the Pull
Tabs and Boss Fuel?” The boy nods a frantic affirmative, and I
can see fear's cold sweat on his brow. I steel my resolve for the
inevitable conclusion. “What about the guitarist for the
Cobramatics? Is that Johnny Maguire, known around these parts
as a columnist for the Agenda?”
He stiffens, nods once, twice, hesitantly. “And the other
guitarist, the one from Louisiana Hayride – isn't that Jami
Wolloff from the Sleazies,
formerly of Violent Anal Death?” The kid moans softly, but his
eyes say yes. In my profession, you gotta read the body language
sometimes.
“And
what about the drummer from the Hayride? Isn't that Bob
Giusti, from Dino Club? And
hasn't he been in about a zillion local bands, going all the way back
to Rash of Stabbings in the '80s?” The
kid's eyes flicker off to the left, disturbing my concentration
momentarily. I glance off in that direction, and there she is, the
chick in the red feather boa. I just have time to recognize her
before I feel a sudden pinch on my neck, like a hundred mosquito
bites at once. I reach up with my other hand, and there's some kind
of dart sticking out of my jugular.
Shit.
Tranquilizer darts. I shoulda known.
I aim the gun at the lady, but my reflexes are already slowed. The
shot goes wide and hits the streetlight.That's it. I'm
done for. It's my last thought
as I slump to the ground. I guess I'll never ... know for
sure ... whether that drummer ... was really ... Bob ... Giusti ...
ADDENDUM:
The
editors of the Agenda would
like to take a moment to reassure you that there were no gunshots
fired by hit men outside the Green Room on Saturday,
March 12. The bands mentioned above, however, did actually rock the
joint.
Interviewer:Can you explain jazz? Yogi: I can't, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The
other half is the part people play while others are playing
something they never played with anyone who played that part.
So if you play the wrong part, it's right. If you play the right
part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play
it too right, it's wrong.
Interviewer:I don't understand. Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can't understand it.
It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Interviewer:Do you understand it? Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't
know anything about it.
Interviewer:Are there any great jazz players
alive today? Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for
the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the
ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that
are dead. Some would kill for it.
Interviewer:What is syncopation? Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either
before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they
happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of
music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different
from those other kinds.
Interviewer:Now I really don't understand. Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand
jazz that well.
# first, filter thru spamassassin, locking with 'spamlock':
:0f: spamlock
| nice -15 /usr/bin/spamassassin
:0:
* ^X-Spam-Flag:.*YES
{
#If tagged as spam, report it, locking on 'spamreportlock':
:0c: spamreportlock
| nice -15 /usr/bin/spamassassin -r
# Keep a copy in mail/spam so reports can be revoked
# with spamassassin -k in case of error (after a
# very short time of tuning the Bayesian with
# spamassassin -r, I've gotten no false positives
# in months).
:0
mail/Spam
}
MaryBue.com
Transplanted Minnesotan Mary
Bue has taken over maintenance of the weblog I designed for
her. The site template is a simple one, which essentially varies
only in color from the basic Blosxom template.
I'm sitting at the public terminal in the AS220 Cafe as I type
this. You'll find me here pretty often on Tuesday nights, where
I work as House Manager for UM -- which is a jazz band
with a revolving lineup. The core members are Hal Crook
on the trombone and electronic effects box (he calls it the
"trom-o-tizer"), Bob Gullotti on the drums (this week,
Ferenk Nemeth is filling in admirably), Rick
Peckham on the guitar and Dave Zinno on the upright
bass. Nominally, I'm working the door for this event --
collecting the cover charge, stamping hands for re-entry,
paying the band at the end of the night -- but tomight I am
glued to the Drudge Report
and the election
results page at Yahoo.
I voted early this morning. It felt great, but all day at work a
sick fear has been growing inside me. At this point, I feel
physically punched in the gut.
National Novel Writing Month
started today, but this year I didn't even take a stab at
writing any fiction. (Last year's attempt is still archived
around here somewhere.)
It's really not so difficult to write one thousand, six hundred
and sixty-six (and two-thirds) words per day. It's just that
with the election tomorrow occupying most of my conscious
thought, I haven't given myself an opportunity to start writing
about anything that's not really happening. Fiction can wait.
I guess we all know who we're voting for in the presidential
election, but how many of us have left any brain cells for state
and local elections (I'm lucky enough to be in District 5, so I can
endorse the Green Party's Jeff
Toste for State Senate) let alone constitutional referenda
and bond initiatives?
With that in mind, I'm staying up a bit later than
I ought tonight and typing up a quick guide to Rhode Island's
ballot questions one through fourteen.
------- Blind-Carbon-Copy
From: tomfool at as220.org
To: osaction at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Question 3, DOT
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:59:33 -0400
Hello all:
Question 3 isn't on anyone's radar, really. There are lots more
significant issues than DOT to deal with this election. But it is an
issue that affects us here, and if you're wondering about what to do
on that question, please vote against it. Defeating these bonds will
not mean an end to road construction, but it may mean the start of a
return to sanity in the state budget. I, for one, would prefer that
my taxes go to public education or protecting the Bay instead of
supporting the lifestyle of people who invest in state bonds.
Here's an op-ed submitted to the Projo a while ago, but that probably
won't see light of day before the election. Since it won't, please
help me by passing this along to anyone you think might be interested
(short list, I know, but think...).
There's more about this (and RIPTA's woes, too) in the latest issue of
my newsletter, which can be found at whatcheer.net.
Providence, R.I., Panel Says Laws against Downloading Music Don't Help Artists
Posted on Fri, Apr. 16, 2004
Providence, R.I., Panel Says Laws against Downloading Music Don't Help Artists By Rick Massimo, Providence Journal, R.I.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Apr. 16 - The title of yesterday's panel discussion at Johnson & Wales was
"Pirates of the Web: The Ethics of Downloading," but the panelists were in
basic agreement that downloading music from the Internet is anything but
piracy.
In recent months, the Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf
of the "Big Five" record labels, has launched wide-ranging prosecutions of
thousands of downloaders across the country, accusing them of violating
copyright law. All three panelists yesterday agreed that the laws, said to
protect artists, do little more than feed corporations. One panelist called the
prosecutions an attempt to maintain "complete control of an expanding
marketplace" and another said they created "a culture of fear."
The panelists included Umberto Crenca, the artistic director of AS220, the
unjuried art space in Providence, a painter and a musician with The Panic Band;
Jonathan Frankel, a lawyer based in Washington; and Jim Marks, a Web designer
and musician based in Boston.
Crenca opened the discussion by displaying two signs, reading "Lawyer-Free
Zone" and "Free Mickey." His opening statement was "mostly stolen," he said,
from the book Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig.
Crenca traced the development of copyright law, and the lengthening
lifespan of copyrights. The first copyrights, he said, were enacted in 1710 and
lasted 14 years. In 1831, U.S. copyrights were for 42 years; in 1909, 56; today
they last the life of the copyright holder plus 70 years.
Crenca noted that the Walt Disney character of Mickey Mouse was created in
1928 for the short film Steamboat Willie, which was based on a Buster Keaton
character named Steamboat Bill. While Disney paid nothing for the character he
"stole" from, Crenca said, every time the Disney copyright on Mickey Mouse has
been about to expire, copyright laws have been lengthened.
"It's time to free Mickey," Crenca said. ". . . Intellect is not
property."
Marks contested the record-industry position that every song downloaded is
a CD sale lost. He gave his own example, saying that when he was an active file
sharer, he was familiar with trends in new music and bought 5 to 10 CDs a
month. After the recent industry crackdown on file sharers, he said, he stopped
downloading. Now he's out of the loop, he says, and buys only about 10 CDs a
year.
"This is what the RIAA doesn't get," Marks said. He said the record
industry's production of new music has slumped exactly as much as record sales.
The Internet and file-sharing services, Marks said, are "the best thing to
happen to independent music." He said it was time to overthrow the industry
model, in which record companies "act as a bank" that finances new releases
(always getting their money back from the artists once sales start rolling in).
Marks' band, Scissorkiss, made three CDs, and never made enough from sales to
cover the pressing costs, he said. Now the band's music is available for free
on its Web site.
Frankel opened by saying that he agreed with much of what Crenca had said.
"The system has to change. Downloading is here; it isn't going away."
He sympathized with music fans, saying he doesn't like "buying a CD with
12 songs on it, and I hate 10 [of them]." But he warned the crowd of about 200,
mostly students, that "for the time being, the law exists."
He said he represents telecommunications companies, Internet service
providers and educational institutions which provide Internet access. He
explained that all these entities can be held liable for copyright-law
violations caused by file sharing, and that the costs of those liabilities
increase the costs of Internet access at schools such as Johnson & Wales.
"If I were in college now, I'm sure I would file share," he said. "But the
consequences are harsh."
After their statements, the panelists exchanged views and took questions
from the moderator and the audience. At one point, Marks said, "I'm
disappointed we're not going to argue more."
Crenca jumped on Frankel's warning and turned it into a call for civil
disobedience. With universities' purchasing power, he said, they could demand
that Internet service providers pressure Congress to change copyright laws.
Marks said that in an age of corporate conglomeration, Sony, which runs a
record label trying to stop the downloading of music, also makes computers that
make downloading possible, and CD burners that facilitate copying.
Marks and Crenca, the two artists on the panel, fielded questions on the
impact of downloading on the economic prospects for their art.
Crenca said that the concept of art for free doesn't bother him as an
artist. "I've had three or four paintings stolen, and I've got boxes of CDs
that I can't get rid of." While the thefts were hurtful experiences because the
paintings were possessions, Crenca said, "culture thrives on this sort of
sharing. . . . There is nothing original in the world."
"I wish more of my music was downloaded," Marks said.
Frankel asked Marks and Crenca what they would do if they were signed to
record labels, and downloading was cutting into their sales.
Marks began by repeating that he "absolutely rejected" the notion that
downloading leads to a reduction in record sales, saying that people download
music to check it out, then buy it. "If [people] like it, they'll pay for it."
Marks and Crenca also attacked the notion that copyright law exists to
protect artists.
"The population that the RIAA is claiming to protect is minuscule," Crenca
said, likening it to the number of athletes who sign multimillion-dollar
contracts.
Marks referred to Puff Daddy's 1998 hit, "I'll Be Missing You," which took
from The Police's "Every Breath You Take." "I think it's bizarre that an artist
can take a Police song and put new lyrics on it and win a Grammy, and I put a
two-second Star Wars sample on one of my songs and I can't afford to get it
pressed" because of the copyright fees.
He also said the standard record contract pays artists roughly 20 cents on
each CD sold. He told the audience to look at recording artists who sell
millions of records, but are still making commercials and movies when,
theoretically, they shouldn't need the money.
"These people don't have the things they tell you they have. And the
recording industry isn't protecting these people; they're using them," he said.
Marks said he knew many musicians who still have to keep day jobs, but
managed to tour Europe with their bands, thanks to the exposure they'd gotten
over the Internet.
And he said there was no reason artists couldn't navigate the music
business by themselves, with a little legal help and some savvy.
"We've perpetuated this idea that artists can't protect themselves," he
said.
-----
To see more of the Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com
Providence Machines, Issue 3 Dave Fischer
is back with another thrilling and cryptic edition of Providence
Machines. I'm somewhat late in announcing the "Cold 2004"
issue; we can only hope that Dave is hard at work on the "Warm
2004" issue, since it's already hotter than July!
Photogallery
Hand-coding static pages for thumbnail galleries of photos (such
as the ones Rachel
Pleasants is making for AS220's Fools Ball) can be a
painfully tedious procedure. After testing and rejecting a few
automatic thumbnail gallery generators, I did what should have
been obvious all along and started looking for a blosxom plugin.
Sure enough, someone had already done all the work. DeWitt Clinton had a simple plugin
available for free
download.
Here's my first test to see whether I installed the plugin
correctly:
It's a cheerful summer day here in Cebu, with the prospect of a pleasant weekend ahead. My morning class went well, my afternoon badminton game will probably go well, and so for some reason I decided to add a big old chunk of turmoil into it all by going to see The Passion of the Christ in between. Frankly, my main reason for wanting to see this movie was curiosity. I had read so much about it and seen so many stills that I figured I might as well make Mad Max even richer by going to see it. So, here are the personal observations of an atheist who has never taken a film theory class in her life:
Accidental Nostalgia
Hey all, my weblog has been lagging lately but I'm just checking
in with a tiny update.
I've been spending all my blog-time helping my friend
Rachel Pleasants are
spiriting me away to Brooklyn today, to see
Cynthia Hopkins'
alt-country operetta "Accidental Nostalgia."
So anyway, I gotta run. I'll probably check in with my NYC
stories by Monday.
Rita parks her bike in front of the copy shop, fishing around in
her army-surplus backpack for the U-lock. Her keys (on a chain
around her neck, which she has to reach into her sweater and
pull out) turn the cylinders and the lock pops open with a
satisfying click. She hooks the U-shaped bar through one of
those wrought-iron trash cans, trying to find the right angle to
get one side of it through her spokes and the other side through
the frame, which usually takes a few minutes, and then when she
slaps the lock back on, it takes a bit of monkeying around to
get the thing properly aligned so that the key will turn.
Got it.
Rita straightens up with a muffled sigh, rearranging the satchel
on her shoulder and scrambling down the flight of cement steps
that leads into the subterranean store. The sign in the window
reads "Xero's" in blue corporate logotype, and a smaller version
appears at the foot of the stairwell, in the shadow that falls
across the door's plate glass.
Same font.
Inside Xero's, bright, blue-tinged fluorescent lights flicker in
the unusually low drop ceiling. Rita scuffs her feet on the red
carpet by the door as she walks past a row of computers,
available for rent by the minute. What a ripoff. Nobody
ever rents the computers. After all, this Xero's is practically
on the campus of a pretty big university, and there are plenty
of other computers on campus that she can use for free. She
comes to Xero's for a different reason: to scam free photocopies.
Margaret
Chevian of the Ocean State Free-Net recently posted an
irresistible offer to their tech support list. In a refreshing
change of pace from the usual discussions of spam filtering and
log-file rotating, she wrote to say:
Hi All
I have seven beautiful black and white kittens, born weekend of Sept 12,
ready for adoption! I'm keeping two so five are up for adoption. Feral
mother was living at the library and I trapped her and brought her home
in the hopes of taming her. Didn't know she was pregnant.
Tandem Writing Exercise Tandem
Writing reminds me of the kind of writing exercises we
employed in the v.e.r.b.a.t.i.m. Potential
Literature Collective. Unfortunately, in the example above,
"Rebecca" and "Gary" can't quite seem to get it together.
My Dinner With MegaHAL
Here's an excerpt from a conversation I recently had with a bot
called "MegaHAL" which learns to mimic your vocabulary and syntax
as you talk to it. My comments are preceded by a ">" character.
It would be great to teach MegaHAL the Abbott and Costello routine
"Who's On First?" That's the kind of patterned conversation this
bot would learn very well indeed.
I'm waiting for the day when everybody at AS220 will have their
own bot trained to take their place at the weekly Staff Meeting.
Last week was one of those weeks where nothing quite seemed to go right, and this week was looking like it was heading that way as well. Then something great happened.
1.) Do you use procmail to sort your mail into folders?
# From my .procmailrc
:0:
* X-BeenThere: linux-elitists
elite
:0:
* ^FROM: sparkleb@example.com
ello
:0:
* ^FROM: ello@example.org
ello
:0:
* ^Subject:.*worldofwrong
wow
I return home from an evening out, feeling mildly unwell. I blame it on the food and beer I have just consumed and go straight to bed.
3am, Monday morning:
I wake up in Antarctica. Why is it suddenly so cold in my room? Why did I go to sleep wearing only a light sarong, with the fan blowing on me? It was mistakes like that one that killed Captain Scott all those years ago...
Well, I tried the Debian Bible:
modus@gumzilla~:$ bible Prov2:11-15
Proverbs 2
11 Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:
12 To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh
froward things;
13 Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;
14 Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked;
15 Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:
So my question is, when I find typos like the above, how hard is it to
s/froward/forward/g and donate the correction to the codebase?
Perhaps if I just tar -xvzf the kjv-bible-text package, I'll understand.
Whoops, I have to gunzip the file '/usr/doc/bible-kjv-text/changelog.gz'.
Whew, that was fun to read, but I haven't found the raw text ...
Okay, using 'locate bible' I found /usr/bin/bible and
/usr/lib/bible.data ... dismissing the binary as a blind alley I'll take
a peek at the data file ... aargh! It's all hexadecimal!
What to do?
modus@gumzilla~:$ bible Prov2:11-15 | sed '/froward/ s//forward/g' >> proverb.txt
Proverbs 2
11 Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:
12 To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh
forward things;
13 Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;
14 Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the forwardness of the wicked;
15 Whose ways are crooked, and they forward in their paths:
Sweet dreams, linux-elitists.
--
/home/modus/.signature
Ben Finney looked into the void, and said:
> On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Modus Operandi wrote:
> > So my question is, when I find typos like the above, how hard is it to
> > s/froward/forward/g and donate the correction to the codebase?
>
> One would think that "donate to the codebase" should at least suggest
> getting the *source* for the package, instead of trying to modify the
> *binary* package of an database version of the Bible.
That really was just me being stupid (as opposed to trying to be funny.)
Thanks for the tip.
> =====
> $ cd ~
> $ apt-get source bible-kjv-text
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> Need to get 1388kB of source archives.
> Get:1 http://proxy testing/main bible-kjv 4.14 (dsc) [616B]
> Get:2 http://proxy testing/main bible-kjv 4.14 (tar) [1388kB]
> Fetched 1388kB in 56s (24.4kB/s)
> dpkg-source: extracting bible-kjv in bible-kjv-4.14
Well, now I see how easy it really is.
> $ cd bible-kjv-4.14/
> $ grep -c froward bible.rawtext
> 23
> =====
>
> Quite a common error. Shall you submit a patch or shall I?
They'll probably throw it out ... the reason the word is so common is
because it's really supposed to be the word "froward" (see other
replies in thread) which was apparently in common usage when the KJV
was drafted. To : fro :: toward : froward. Those froward folks Solomon
warns us about are turning away from something, presumably wisdom and
righteousness, rather than moving "toward" it. So "froward" is not an
error. It *is* a really funny word, though.
--
/home/modus/.signature
_______________________________________________
linux-elitists
http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-elitists
This e-mail is about child prostitution. If you're uncomfortable with the topic or were planning on forwarding this to your children/grandmother/priest, you might want to delete rather than read this one.
Here in the Philippines, there is a very high premium placed on finding a mate. People marry fast and young, sometimes too fast and too young. If, as I have, you have reached the ripe age of 23 without settling down, well-meaning friends and neighbors tend to feel that it is their sworn duty to find you someone. Many volunteers cope with this by announcing that they have boyfriends or girlfriends back home, and some just cave in to the pressure and end up on a series of awkward blind dates. For the first nine months of my service I had a semi-imaginary boyfriend named Kevin. He is a real person, but definitely not the man I intend to marry after this whole pesky "my organization" thing stops keeping us apart.
I have now been in Cebu City at my new site for three days, and it's been eventful. I got here early on Wednesday morning and went straight to the center, where I spent the day getting oriented with the place. It's a night and day difference from Butuan. There is a lot of funding here (it's a relatively wealthy island), and local NGOs pitch in support and funding. There is a full-time therapist and even a nutritionist for the kids. Because of all the other support services in the city, there is a huge turnover in the population of kids at the center, with the average stay being only about a month (as opposed to over a year in Butuan). That makes it hard to plan continuing educational activities for them, but it also keeps the occupancy low and is better for the kids in the long run.
It's a beautiful morning in downtown Cebu, and I'm getting ready to go make paper. My new sitemates Mike and Becky are very excited about this project. Basically, you take all the crappy old scraps of paper you have lying around, mush them up, filter them through a screen, and in a mere twelve hours you end up with a piece of lumpy gray cardboard. What I will do with a bunch of lumpy gray cardboard, I have no idea, but at least it keeps me off the streets for a day or so.